BHODemon
BHODemon Think of
BHODemon as a guardian for your Internet browser:
it protects you from unknown Browser Helper Objects
(BHOs), by letting you enable/disable them individually.
BHODemon is free, runs in the tray area, and works
on Windows 95 or later operating systems.
What is a Browser Helper Object? A Browser
Helper Object, or BHO, is just a small program that
runs automatically every time you start your Internet
browser. Usually, a BHO is installed on your system
by another software program. For example, Go!Zilla,
the downloading utility, installs a BHO created by
Radiate (formerly Aureate Media); this BHO tracks
which advertisements you see as you surf the Web.
The natural question is, what do BHOs
do? The technical answer is anything, but generally,
it will have something to do with helping you browse
the Internet. Of course, some BHOs are what is called
ad-ware or spyware: they do things like monitor the
websites you visit and report this data back to their
creators.
Although many people are extremely concerned
about them because of the privacy issue, BHOs are
not necessarily bad things, and most of them are well-intentioned
and beneficial. For example, the P3P (Platform for
Privacy Preferences) program spearheaded by the W3C
(World Wide Web Consortium) and major vendors, including
Microsoft, AT&T, and IBM, will be delivered as
a BHO. Some BHOs, however, are placed secretly on
your system, and there is certainly no technical reason
why they could not be programmed to send information
about your system (or your web surfing habits) over
the Internet without your knowledge.
Also, there is no restriction on what
a BHO can do your system; it can do anything any other
program can do: read or write (or delete) anything
on your system. Usually, software is installed on
your system explicitly by you; when you do so, you
are, in effect, saying that you trust the vendor.
BHOs, however, have a history of being installed without
the users knowledge (fine print notwithstanding)
Given that (a) BHOs can do absolutely
anything to your system, and (b) they are often installed
without your knowledge, there is a distinct potential
for abuse by vendors. The problem is, until now you
had no way of knowing which BHOs are on your machine,
who put them there, and what they do. This is what
BHODemon does - it lets you easily manage your BHOs,
and tells you what each BHO on your system is doing.
